We’re Getting Closer to a Hyperloop...

This aged like milk

So, to sum up: No, we're really not getting any closer to a "Hyperloop"

Everything I've read about the power and advamced construction materials needed to safely and efficiently create such a large vacuum, along with all the safety redundancies you'd have to put in place make this seem super unlikely on any mass level.

Since we can’t even get a proven technology like high speed rail built in this country, I’m highly skeptical Hyperloop would ever be built.

I literally just watched a sideprojects talking about how the Hyperloop is realistically impossible

The California high speed railway hasn’t “collapsed”. Development is fully funded through 2030, and is proceeding.

Well if we're ignoring all the massive flaws that would lead to explosive compression and kill everyone in the system sure, the hyperloop is totally possible. I love how it was going to run through the desert with no expansion joints because metal totally doesn't change shape when heated.

Whenever I hear or see something about building a Hyperloop I think of the Simpsons episode about building a Monorail.

As a resident of California, let me disabuse you with the idea that the high speed rail project has collapsed. While it has been embattled, and there are still challenges ahead, they are just about to finish a significant section I think about a quarter of the entire distance, and it’s supposed to go further. Now whether it’ll actually get finished or not is is still an open question, but nobody who is involved, in it has given up, and none of the projects that are in process have been abandoned.

It's a well known fact at this point that Musk only started the hyperloop hype because he didn't want America to start the new train project which would make his cars less desirable.

I'd like to see the configuration to maintain the vacuum of the tube while docking a train.

I laughed out loud at the proposal to have a depressurized tube under the sea ... nothing quite like making it even more inconceivable to have such a tube than surrounding the tube by the immense pressures of water.

Musk's Hyperloop was more about derailing California HSR than ever about building a true system --and it worked. Even now that Hyperloop One has declared bankruptcy, CaHSR detractors (who probably have never taken public transport) say what we really need is "Maglev".

I think the biggest difference between cars, boats, trains, planes, etc. and the hyperloop is the basic concept of where they travel. The other forms of transportation might've been tricky to figure out at first, but where they traveled once they were operational (e.g. across the ground, in the sky, on the water) was simple. The hyperloop, on the other hand, doesn't sound like a particularly complex vehicle to figure out relative to what we already have, but where it travels seems preposterously impractical for a litany of reasons to anyone who has ever worked with or learned about creating and maintaining a vacuum.

The main problem I see at least with any of these large projects aiming to spend a lot of money in order to move people very fast over large distances, is that you can negate the need for such a thing by either removing the requirement for the people to travel in the first place (remote work, telepresence, etc), or just using existing methods and accepting the travel time, use the money to make the journey more comfortable, provide good internet on the trains etc. Both of these come at a fraction of the price, are things we already know how to do, and require no engineering megaprojects such as continent-spanning vacuum tubes or new materials.

You often do good work, but not so on this topic. Hyperloop is a cartoon concept put forth by a cartoon CEO in order to distract Californians from supporting high speed rail. The concept has taken on more hype-life than I’m sure Musk first imagined it would, but in the end there’s absolutely no cost effective or practical way to pull this off, not to mention the enormous safety issues. Time to move on.

Oh Simon......you're whistling in the wind with this one

The number of reasons it's not viable are massive. For one, the amount of energy takes to draw and maintain vacuum in hundreds of miles of the tunnel almost certainly exceeds the Energy savings

Seems difficult to see a big market where this is better than regular trains for moving freight, or better than airplanes for moving humans.

Nooooooo. Simon watch thunderf00t